Data networks, such as wireless communication networks, have to trade off between services customized for a single terminal and services provided to a large number of terminals. For example, the distribution of content to a large number of resource limited portable devices (subscribers) is a complicated problem. Therefore, it is very important for network administrators, content retailers, and service providers to have a way to distribute content and/or other network services in a fast and efficient manner and in such a way as to increase bandwidth utilization and terminal power efficiency.
In current content delivery/distribution systems, foreground and background services are packed into a transmission frame and delivered to devices on a network. For example, a communication network may utilize Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) to broadcast services from a network server to one or more mobile devices. For example, the foreground services comprise real time streaming video and/or audio that generally needs to be processed when received. The background services comprise non real-time advertisements, files or other data.
It has become increasingly important in current wireless distribution systems to be able to efficiently distribute non real-time data files to multiple devices. Conventional systems rely on an existing technology called Reliable Multicast Transport (RMT) that is specifically targeted for multicast file transfers in wired multicast networks. This technology utilizes relatively large packet headers relating to the routing of data packets and congestion control. However, packet routing and congestion control may not be problematic in a wireless distribution network and so RMT may be inefficient and not suitable for distributing non real-time files. Furthermore, RMT requires receiving devices to utilize complicated receiving logic so that the overhead associated with RMT can be processed.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a system that operates to efficiently transfer files to multiple devices on a wireless distribution network, and also allows for simplified device/receiver implementations.